Dream of a Common Language. Sueño de un Idioma Común.

The graduates of a radical bilingual education program at Alicia R. Chacón International, in El Paso, would have no trouble reading either of these headlines. What can they teach the rest of us about the future of Texas?

by Nate Blakeslee

On (En) a warm spring morning in east El Paso, I watched a science teacher named Yvette Garcia wrap duct tape around the wrists of one of her best students. We were in a tidy lab room on the first floor of Del Valle High School, in the Ysleta Independent School District, about two miles from the border in a valley once covered with cotton and onion fields but long since swallowed up by the sprawl of El Paso. Garcia taped a second student around the ankles, bound a third around the elbows, and so on, until she had temporarily handicapped a half-dozen giggling teenagers, whom she then cheerfully goaded into a footrace followed by a peanut-eating contest. It was a demonstration of the scientific concept of genetic mutation—or at least I think it was. The lab was taught entirely in Spanish, and my limited skills didn’t allow me to follow a discussion of an advanced academic concept. But these kids could grasp the lesson equally well in Spanish or in English, because they had been taught—most of them since elementary school—using a cutting-edge bilingual education program known as dual language.

Saigon 2009

Afghanistan is today's Vietnam. No question mark needed.

BY THOMAS H. JOHNSON, M. CHRIS MASON | AUGUST 20, 2009

For those who say that comparing the current war in Afghanistan to the Vietnam War is taking things too far, here's a reality check: It's not taking things far enough. From the origins of these North-South conflicts to the role of insurgents and the pointlessness of this week's Afghan presidential elections, it's impossible to ignore the similarities between these wars. The places and faces may have changed but the enemy is old and familiar. The sooner the United States recognizes this, the sooner it can stop making the same mistakes in Afghanistan.

Even at first glance the structural parallels alone are sobering. Both Vietnam and Afghanistan (prior to the U.S. engagement there) had surprisingly defeated a European power in a guerrilla war that lasted a decade, followed by a largely north-south civil war which lasted another decade. Insurgents in both countries enjoyed the advantage of a long, trackless, and uncloseable border and sanctuary beyond it, where they maintained absolute political control. Both were land wars in Asia with logistics lines more than 9,000 miles long and extremely harsh terrain with few roads, which nullified U.S. advantages in ground mobility and artillery. Other key contributing factors bear a striking resemblance: Almost exactly 80 percent of the population of both countries was rural, and literacy hovered around 10 percent.

Breakthrough Makes LED Lights More Versatile

By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer

posted: 20 August 2009 02:01 pm ET

LEDs have started to blink on all over the place in recent years, from car taillights to roadside billboards. But design and manufacturing drawbacks have limited the ways in which the energy-efficient lights can be used.

A new study, detailed in the Aug. 21 issue of the journal Science, tackles these limitations by combining the best of two worlds of LEDs to make ultrathin, ultrasmall and flexible light-emitting diodes that may one day be used to create everything from laptop screens to biomedical imaging devices.

LEDs come in two types: organic and inorganic. Organic LEDs aren't alive, they are just made of organic materials, which means they contain carbon atoms. Inorganic LEDs are more robust and brighter than organic ones, but they're also bulkier as result of how they are put together, explained study leader John Rogers of the University of Illinois.

Dying for affordable healthcare — the uninsured speak

In a week of claim and counter-claim about the merits of healthcare provision in the US and UK, Ed Pilkington travelled to Quindaro, Kansas, to see how the poorest survive

Ed Pilkington, Kansas City
guardian.co.uk,
Friday 21 August 2009 20.44 BST

In the furious debate gripping America over the future of its health system, one voice has been lost amid the shouting. It is that of a distinguished gynaecologist, aged 67, called Dr Joseph Manley.

For 35 years Manley had a thriving health clinic in Kansas. He lived in the most affluent neighbourhood of Kansas City and treated himself to a new Porsche every year. But this is not a story about doctors' remuneration and their lavish lifestyles.

Neutralizing Big Oil's Climate Bill Attack, With Investment in Manufacturing

By Bill Scher

Created 08/21/2009 - 1:29pm

The oil lobby's latest Astroturf concoction is "Energy Citizens." [1] Its website practically looks like it's a group pushing clean green jobs [1], with it's green-tinted USA map and call to "support American jobs and affordable energy." Its attempt as a grassroots rally was rightly deemed nothing more than a "company picnic," [2] just another ruse to kill the clean energy and climate protection bill which passed the House and should be taken up by the Senate later in the year.

As we've seen in the health care debate, the conservative movement and their corporate backers still have the ability to spread lies and warp debate. If the climate bill is tagged as a job-killer, that will be a bill-killer.

While the entire enterprise of averting a climate crisis by capping carbon emissions is sure to launch a vibrant green jobs industry, we must take extra steps to ensure that the America component of any global warming strategy creates good-paying American green jobs, not sends even more jobs away to other countries. This is our best chance to revitalize America's manufacturing base, and we'll likely lose political support to address the climate crisis if we don't also seize this economic opportunity.

Report: Public Plan Choice In Congressional Health Plans

The Good, The Not-So-Good, And The Ugly

By Jacob S. Hacker, Ph.D.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The historic health reform bills passed out of three House committees and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee all include a national public health insurance plan as a way to rein in costs, improve quality, and help make health care affordable. This new public plan would be available alongside regulated private plans within an insurance “exchange” open to those without employment-based insurance, promoting choice and competition in often highly concentrated local insurance markets. Yet crucial differences in the design and robustness of the public plan distinguish the bills passed out of committee. Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee, which has yet to produce a bill, has already taken the public health insurance option off the table.

This policy brief explores the various versions of public plan choice on the congressional agenda and shows how their best aspects can be combined to produce an effective public plan that will deliver on its promise—and why the cooperative “alternative” embraced by negotiators in the Senate Finance Committee does not merit consideration.

Lockerbie Doubts

By Lisa Pease
August 21, 2009

In any kind of major transnational event, there is the historical truth, what actually happened, and the political truth, what must have happened for the nations involved to continue on as before.

Sometimes, these accounts match; other times, these “truths” are wildly divergent, which appears to be the case with the Lockerbie bombing.

On Thursday, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of planting a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over the hills over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, was released. The Scottish authorities said they were letting al-Megrahi go free on “compassionate grounds” because he was terminally ill from cancer.

Want to Boycott Fox News Sponsors? Here's a List

By Bill Mann, Huffington Post
Posted on August 21, 2009, Printed on August 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.huffingtonpost.com//142134/

Fox News, the future home of Lou Dobbs, aka "The Bill O'Reilly/Megyn Kelly Network," has recently lost some big-name advertisers on psychic exile Glen Beck's race-baiting carnival sideshow, you've probably read here.

I mentioned here last week that it's possible to have your local city council pull that toxin-spewing outfit off the local cable lineup in your town when the cable operator's contract comes up for But there's something else you can do in the meantime that could be far more effective in stopping the ringleaders of the Disloyal Opposition.

Health Care Mobs = Swift Boat Vets... And the Press Plays Dumb, Again

By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America
Posted on August 21, 2009, Printed on August 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142125/

Here we go again.

During August's summer daze, right-wing mini-mobs (egged on by corporate interests) have run wild at town hall meetings, propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an effort to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet the mini-mob members have been treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

Sound familiar? Recall August 2004, when the right-wing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (egged on by corporate interests) stole a month's worth of campaign headlines by propagating all kinds of smears and misinformation in an attempt to derail an important Democratic campaign. Yet they were treated as deeply important newsmakers by the press during a slow summer news month.

Stiglitz Calls for New Global Reserve System

Published: Friday, 21 Aug 2009 | 9:13 AM ET

By: Reuters

A new global reserve system is needed after the global financial crisis exposed the U.S. dollar-based system as flawed and risky, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Friday.

The "dollar now is yielding almost zero return," Stiglitz said in a speech at the United Nations regional headquarters in Bangkok. "The current global reserve system is fraying. It's falling apart. The issue isn't whether we go to a new system.

Has Obama Lost the Trust of Progressives, as Krugman Says?

by Salon.com

by Glenn Greenwald

Paul Krugman has an excellent column [1] today arguing that progressives have backlashed so intensely over the prospect of Obama's dropping the public option because -- for reasons extending far beyond specific health care issues -- they no longer trust the President. Citing Obama's steadfast continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, the administration's extreme coziness with crisis-causing banks, and the endless retreats on health care, Krugman says that "a backlash in the progressive base . . . has been building for months" and that "progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it."

Krugman contends that while "the fight over the public option involves real policy substance," it is at least as much "a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach." That's the argument I made the other day [2] about why the health care fight is so important regardless of one's views of the public option. The central pledges of the Obama campaign were less about specific policy positions and much more about changing the way Washington works -- to liberate political outcomes from the dictates of corporate interests; to ensure vast new levels of transparency in government; to separate our national security and terrorism approaches from the politics of fear. With [3] some [4] mild [5] exceptions [6], those have been repeatedly violated. Negotiating his health care reform plan in total secrecy and converting it into a gigantic gift to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries -- which is exactly what a plan with (1) mandates, (2) no public option and (3) a ban on bulk negotiations for drug prices would be [7] -- would constitute yet another core violation of those commitments, yet another bolstering (a major one) of the very power dynamic he vowed to subvert.

Paul Krugman: Obama’s Trust Problem

According to news reports, the Obama administration — which seemed, over the weekend, to be backing away from the “public option” for health insurance — is shocked and surprised at the furious reaction from progressives.

Well, I’m shocked and surprised at their shock and surprise.

A backlash in the progressive base — which pushed President Obama over the top in the Democratic primary and played a major role in his general election victory — has been building for months. The fight over the public option involves real policy substance, but it’s also a proxy for broader questions about the president’s priorities and overall approach.

Why the health care debate is so important regardless of one's view of the "public option"

The New York Times today has a discussion from several contributors, including me, of the politics of the health care debate. My contribution, which focuses on the role the White House has played and the ample evidence that they have been quite active in shaping the course of events, can be read here. I want to elaborate on a couple of points I referenced in passing.

Over the past decade, the Democratic Party has specialized in offering up one excuse after the next for its collective failures. During the early Bush years, the excuse was that they endorsed Bush policies because his popularity and post-9/11 hysteria made it politically unwise to oppose him. In later Bush years when his popularity plummeted, the excuse was that Democrats were in the minority and could do nothing. After 2006 when they won a Congressional majority, the excuse was that Bush still controlled the White House and had veto power. After 2008 when a Democrat won the White House, the excuse was that Republicans could filibuster.

Rove op-ed reveals he had inside information about probe

Posted By Larisa Alexandrovna On August 20, 2009 @ 4:01 pm In

Lawyer declines to say how he found out accuser didn’t talk to Justice Department

Karl Rove’s latest attempt to proclaim his innocence and demand apologies from those who have accused him of being behind the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman may backfire if it turns out that Rove was improperly receiving inside information after leaving his position as Deputy White House Chief of Staff.

“For more than two years,” Rove [1] writes in the Wall Street Journal, “House Judiciary Committee Democrats and the New York Times editorial board have argued that I personally arranged for Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to be prosecuted in 2004 for corruption and ordered the removal of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006 for failing to investigate Democrats. The Washington Post editorial board also echoed this last charge. The Times and the Post have published a combined 18 editorials on these issues, which were also catnip to House Judiciary Committee Democrats.”

Utilizing Public Airwaves, Media Mogul Murdoch Is Big Muscle Behind Fraudulent Astro Turfers

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on August 20, 2009, Printed on August 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142068/

As nearly 2,000 progressives made their way last weekend to Pittsburgh for the annual Netroots Nation conference, the right made its stand in the same town with a conference called RightOnline, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, a group that has gained notoriety for its involvement in organizing seemingly grassroots opposition to health-care reform.

Billed as a counterconference to the Netroots Nation gathering of bloggers and online activists, RightOnline convened at a Sheraton hotel, offering a few 101-level workshops on new technologies like Twitter and YouTube.

Health Care Rats Come Out of the Woodwork

By Matt Taibbi, True/Slant
Posted on August 20, 2009, Printed on August 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://trueslant.com//142095/

It is not the be-all and end-all of health-care reform. It is not the long-awaited safety net for the uninsured. And if, as many liberals hope, it turns out to be nothing more than Medicare for All, it won't do anything to hold down long-term growth in health spending.

via Public Optioned-Out -- The Opinionator Blog -- NYTimes.com.

There are some days when it almost seems like the national press is making a conscious effort to prove Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent gospel.

Blackwater: CIA Assassins?

By Jeremy Scahill

August 20, 2009

In April 2002, the CIA paid Blackwater more than $5 million to deploy a small team of men inside Afghanistan during the early stages of US operations in the country. A month later, Erik Prince, the company's owner and a former Navy SEAL, flew to Afghanistan as part of the original twenty-man Blackwater contingent. Blackwater worked for the CIA at its station in Kabul as well as in Shkin, along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they operated out of a mud fortress known as the Alamo. It was the beginning of a long relationship between Blackwater, Prince and the CIA.

Now the New York Times is reporting that in 2004 the CIA hired Blackwater "as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda." According to the Times, "it is unclear whether the CIA had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance."

UBS Money Laundering: What Did Phil Gramm Know?

Posted on Aug 18, 2009

By Robert Scheer

In recent days yet another wealthy private customer of the Swiss-based banking conglomerate UBS admitted to criminal fraud in a growing parade of perp walks that could extend into the thousands. It is a case that threatens to ensnare former Sen. Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who is vice chairman of UBS’ investment banking business. Given the widespread involvement of UBS in what the Justice Department alleges were systematic efforts to violate U.S. tax laws, it must be asked: Did Gramm as a top executive have no inkling about what was going on?

Perhaps, but for Gramm this has to be a moment that at the very least tests his ideological commitment to the radical deregulation of banking that he championed during his 24 years in Congress. He joined UBS soon after the bank acquired Enron, a company that had gone bankrupt after jumping through the “Enron loophole” in the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which Gramm had pushed though Congress. Gramm’s wife, Wendy, had been an Enron board member and head of its audit committee but failed to sound the alarm before the Houston-based company collapsed. Then UBS itself ran into big trouble because of $37 billion in bad mortgage debt made possible by derivatives market deregulation engineered by then-Sen. Gramm. U.S. taxpayers have had to pony up money to heal UBS’ self-inflicted wound. But the bank’s involvement with tens of thousands of secret accounts tied to allegations of tax evasion raises starker issues—of possible criminal fraud through practices that Gramm as a senator helped keep opaque.

Health Care Hypocrisy

Many of the pundits attacking government health insurance rely on government health insurance for their own families.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009, at 9:46 AM ET

Dick ArmeyYou have to give Whole Foods CEO John Mackey credit for having the courage of his convictions. Last week, the libertarian penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that national health care was a step toward socialism and advocating a series of alternative steps—including healthier eating and high-deductible insurance policies of the type that Whole Foods employees are offered. A Whole Foods spokeswoman told me that Mackey "participates in the same plan that is offered to all of our Whole Foods Market team members," which includes a "combination of high-deductible health insurance and a Personal Wellness Account." (Whole Foods pays the premium for full-timers' health insurance and puts up to $1,800 into the savings accounts.) In Mackey's case, what's good for the free-range goose is good for the free-range gander.

Thomas Frank: Dissent Commodified

The counterculture seamlessly fits into business culture.

The 40th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival has certain pundits in a misty-eyed nostalgic funk for the days when youth culture came of age, challenging conformity, standing up for individuality, and making awesome music before it all got so commercialized.

The memory it brought back for me came from the late Trader Monthly magazine, a chronicler of the truculent way of the trading pits and possibly the definitive opposite of the Aquarian spirit. Leafing through an old issue a while ago, I happened across "Cash of the Titans," an accounting of the nation's most successful speculators, in which images of the billionaires were tastefully rendered by none other than Peter Max, the artist once beloved of the Now Generation for his psychedelic posters.

Perhaps this coming together of peace, love and accumulation brought a curse to the lips of Woodstock's earnest memorialists. For me, it was a reminder of how seamlessly counterculture and business culture have meshed; how neatly '60s cultural radicalism fit into structures it was supposedly against.

MONEY AND COMMODITY MARKETS, Part 1

Integrity deficit has its price
By Henry CK Liu

In a global financial architecture of national fiat currencies, the role of a reserve currency in international trade is to keep all trading nations monetarily honest.

This is done by requiring each and every currency issuer to adopt monetary policies that will protect and maintain the exchange value of their separate fiat currencies to the reserve currency. Thus for the exchange rate regime to work, it is imperative for the reserve currency itself to hold constant purchasing power.

The Afghan pipe dream

By Pepe Escobar

PARIS - America's convoluted, Alice-in-Wonderland interpretation of this summer's top political show - the "free expression of the people" in the Afghanistan election - reads like an opium dream. In fact, it is actually a pipe dream - as in Pipelineistan. With the added twist that no one's saying a word about the pipe that's delivering the opium dream.

As in an opium dream, delusion reigns. The chances of United States President Barack Obama actually elaborating what his AfPak strategy really is are as likely as having his super-envoy Richard Holbrooke share a pipe with explosive uber-guerrilla warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Activist Who Staged Gun Interview At Obama Event Was Prominent Defender Of '90s Militia

By Justin Elliott - August 18, 2009, 6:47PM

Ernest Hancock, the online radio host who staged an interview with an assault rifle-wielding cohort at the Obama event in Arizona yesterday -- and was himself armed with a 9 millimeter pistol -- was a vocal supporter and friend of right-wing anti-government militia members who were convicted of conspiracy and weapons charges in the 90s.

And in an interview today with TPMmuckraker, Hancock said he still believes the Viper Militia case was "manufactured" by the same government that manufactured Waco and lied to its people about 9/11.

How mercury becomes toxic in the environment

Naturally occurring organic matter in water and sediment appears to play a key role in helping microbes convert tiny particles of mercury in the environment into a form that is dangerous to most living creatures.

The Lanny Davis Disease and America's Health Care Debate

by Glenn Greenwald

After Tom Daschle was selected to be Barack Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services and chief health care adviser, Matt Taibbi wrote: "In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle." One could easily have added: "And then there's Lanny Davis." Davis frequently injects himself into political disputes, masquerading as a "political analyst" and Democratic media pundit, yet is unmoored from any discernible political beliefs other than: "I agree with whoever pays me." It's genuinely difficult to recall any instance where he publicly defended someone who hadn't, at some point, hired and shuffled money to him. Yesterday, he published a new piece simultaneously in The Hill and Politico -- solemnly warning that extremists on the Far Left and Far Right are jointly destroying democracy with their conduct in the health care debate and urging "the vast center-left and center-right of this country to speak up and call them out equally" -- that vividly illustrates the limitless whoring behavior which shapes Washington generally and specifically drives virtually every word out of Lanny Davis' mouth.

Where's Mr. Transformer?

By Eugene Robinson

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

It's true that politics is the art of the possible, but it's also true that great leaders expand the scope of possibility. Barack Obama took office pledging to be a transformational president. The fate of a government-run public health insurance option will be an early test of his ability to end the way Washington's big-money, special-interest politics suffocates true reform.

Mandate For A Backlash

By Digby

Created 08/17/2009 - 4:19pm

Dean Baker raises [1] a very important point about health care reform without a public option: what happens to the mandate? He argues that for political reasons, if they jettison the public plan, the Democrats should not include mandates either, since they will only line the pockets of the insurance companies until the political pressure becomes so great that a public option will have to be formed anyway. The best thing would be to get rid of mandates now and bring that day closer.

In my view the Democrats are playing with fire in the worst way if they institute mandates without offering any option for reasonably priced insurance. In effect, they will be telling all the people who are currently uninsured that unless they buy unaffordable policies upfront (for which they may receive some money back at the end of the year when they file their taxes) that they must not just live in fear of getting sick as they already do --- they are now criminals. I can't think of a more politically inflammatory thing to do at a time like this. And the right will demagogue this thing in a way that makes Sicko look subtle by comparison.

Troubled History

By Josh Marshall

As we track the escalating number of incidents of right-wing fringers bringing guns to Obama events or other health create town hall events, we are, unsurprisingly, seeing various conservative websites mocking the public concern. "Oh, those Dems, they go all wobbly just because a few upstanding citizens show up with legal firearms." Call it the new girly-manism, it's a sign that Democrats are so many political panty-waists because they've never seen the gun culture up close or just get easily rattled.

It's true that there are some regional divergences at work here. Weapons just don't get carried around in public in say New Jersey or Connecticut the way they do in the South or especially the west.

Why the Public Option Isn't Dispensable

Health reform may not work without it.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, Aug. 17, 2009, at 7:07 PM ET

---

Speculation is rife that the White House will cut loose the "public option"—i.e., the creation of a government health-insurance program to compete against private insurers. The signals aren't new; I began worrying about this nearly six months ago. (See "Is Obama Soft on Health Insurance?") The political mainstream seems to be greeting the latest hints from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and others with its usual shrug that politics is the art of the possible; to make a deal, all sides may have to give something up. The trouble in this instance is that political pragmatism conflicts with programmatic pragmatism. Without a public option, there's a very real danger that health reform simply won't work. It might even make things worse.

If the public option gets dropped, the likely reason won't be a lack of commitment in the White House so much as a lack of votes in the Senate. A recent count from the liberal blogger Chris Bowers indicates 43 senators are prepared to vote in favor. That's seven votes shy of the necessary 50 (Vice President Joe Biden being the tiebreaker) if we assume health care reform passes as a "reconciliation" bill not subject to filibuster. If the reconciliation route is averted, it's 17 votes shy of a filibuster-proof majority. Nate Silver, the numbers-crunching blogger at FiveThirtyEight, knocks Bowers' public-option count down to 41, in part because it's doubtful that the gravely ill Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., will live past the Labor Day recess. On the other hand, Kennedy's death might stir some recalcitrant Democrats to honor his legacy by supporting the public option. (It's worth remembering that a Kennedy death, admittedly under more gruesome and tragic circumstances, helped create Medicare and Medicaid back in 1965.)

DNA evidence can be faked and planted at crime scenes, researchers find

Until now, DNA was considered the "gold standard" of criminal investigations: Hundreds of wrongly convicted individuals have been freed around the world after DNA analysis proved them innocent of their crimes; and many of the guilty have been brought to justice through DNA evidence as well.

But the days of DNA's supremacy in the courtroom could soon come to an end, as researchers in Israel say it can be faked and planted at crime scenes, using basic DNA analysis techniques.

US healthcare debate sick to the heart

By Julian Delasantellis

Whether the late John Hughes will go down as one of the greatest directors of all times in terms of artistic proficiency will be a matter of debate among movie critics; what won't be in question was his ability to spin the box office numbers to amazingly elevated heights. Most prominent among them was 1990's Home Alone, at the time the third highest, and number one comedy, grossing film of all time.

The story begins as an extended American family is marshalling in Chicago for a trip to Paris. The adults, Peter, (John Heard) and Kate (Catherine O'Hara) run through a checklist to make sure they have made all the preparations for the trip, dealing with the house's utilities, their luggage, and, especially, all their nieces, nephews and their own children. To their horror, at the airport they realize that they have forgotten just one thing, their youngest child, 8-year-old Kevin (Macauley Caulkin).

Man carrying assault weapon attends Obama protest

Amanda Lee Myers And Terry Tang, Associated Press Writers
Mon Aug 17, 6:22 pm ET

PHOENIX – About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday — the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.

Gun-rights advocates say they're exercising their constitutional right to bear arms and protest, while those who argue for more gun control say it could be a disaster waiting to happen.

Phoenix police said the gun-toters at Monday's event, including the man carrying an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, didn't need permits. No crimes were committed, and no one was arrested.

In America, Crazy Is a Preexisting Condition

Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage

By Rick Perlstein
Sunday, August 16, 2009

In Pennsylvania last week, a citizen, burly, crew-cut and trembling with rage, went nose to nose with his baffled senator: "One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill. And then you will get your just deserts." He was accusing Arlen Specter of being too kind to President Obama's proposals to make it easier for people to get health insurance.

In Michigan, meanwhile, the indelible image was of the father who wheeled his handicapped adult son up to Rep. John Dingell and bellowed that "under the Obama health-care plan, which you support, this man would be given no care whatsoever." He pressed his case further on Fox News.

In New Hampshire, outside a building where Obama spoke, cameras trained on the pistol strapped to the leg of libertarian William Kostric. He then explained on CNN why the "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots."

Paul Krugman: The Swiss Menace

It was the blooper heard round the world. In an editorial denouncing Democratic health reform plans, Investor’s Business Daily tried to frighten its readers by declaring that in Britain, where the government runs health care, the handicapped physicist Stephen Hawking “wouldn’t have a chance,” because the National Health Service would consider his life “essentially worthless.”

Professor Hawking, who was born in Britain, has lived there all his life, and has been well cared for by the National Health Service, was not amused.

Besides being vile and stupid, however, the editorial was beside the point. Investor’s Business Daily would like you to believe that Obamacare would turn America into Britain — or, rather, a dystopian fantasy version of Britain. The screamers on talk radio and Fox News would have you believe that the plan is to turn America into the Soviet Union. But the truth is that the plans on the table would, roughly speaking, turn America into Switzerland — which may be occupied by lederhosen-wearing holey-cheese eaters, but wasn’t a socialist hellhole the last time I looked.

Who's behind the attacks on a health care overhaul?

By Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Much of the money and strategy behind the so-called grassroots groups organizing opposition to the Democrats' health care plans comes from conservative political consultants, professional organizers and millionaires, some of whom hold financial stakes in the outcome.

If President Barack Obama and Congress extend health insurance coverage to millions of uninsured Americans, raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it, and limit insurers' discretion on who they cover and what they charge, that could pinch these opponents.

Rachel Maddow Slams Dick Armey for Stirring Up Hate in Town Halls

By Staff , MSNBC
Posted on August 17, 2009, Printed on August 17, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142005/

David Gregory: This morning, a special hour-long discussion making sense of health care. What are the issues at the center of the debate? How would reform affect your health care? Separating fact from fiction in the fight. And what does it mean politically for President Obama? With us: former House majority leader Republican Dick Armey, now the head of FreedomWorks, a major organizer of protesters at town hall meetings; Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a medical doctor and member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; former Senate majority leader Democrat Tom Daschle, an informal adviser to the White House and author of “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis”; and Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Plus, additional perspectives from around the country: the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel of New York; Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the Chamber of Commerce; and Democratic Governor Bill Ritter of Colorado.

False ‘Death Panel’ Rumor Has Some Familiar Roots

By JIM RUTENBERG and JACKIE CALMES

WASHINGTON — The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent weeks.

Advanced even this week by Republican stalwarts including the party’s last vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, and Charles E. Grassley, the veteran Iowa senator, the nature of the assertion nonetheless seemed reminiscent of the modern-day viral Internet campaigns that dogged Mr. Obama last year, falsely calling him a Muslim and questioning his nationality.

Dean Baker: The Crazies and the Media

No, I'm not talking about the people who show up at the townhalls yelling about "death panels." I'm talking about folks who are a step down on the evolutionary ladder the people who run the Washington Post.

They were out in full force today spreading misinformation in every direction. In both the lead editorial and a David Broder column we got stern lectures about how the government will soon have to get its fiscal house in order now that the worst of the recession is over.

Don't Blame the Community Reinvestment Act

Homeownership rates and CRA enforcement soared in the 1990s, but sub-prime came later. CRA shouldn't be the scapegoat for the housing meltdown.

Ellen Seidman | August 7, 2009

The mortgage crisis is far from over. Foreclosure filings in the first quarter of 2009 increased 24 percent over the already-heady 2008 levels; April filings were up 1 percent over March and 32 percent over the prior April. During 2008, foreclosure notices were filed on over 2 million properties, and banks took back more than 850,000 properties. Delinquencies continue to climb: 7.88 percent of all mortgages on one- to four-unit buildings were delinquent at the end of 2008, the highest rate on record. For sub-prime loans, the rate was 21.88 percent and almost 14 percent of sub-prime loans were in foreclosure. With home prices still falling -- in March 2009 prices were down 32.2 percent from their 2006 peak -- and unemployment now at 9.4 percent and still rising, it is unlikely the situation will get better any time soon.

The Penance Has Not Been Paid

Following up on this item from yesterday, I had an interesting conversation via email yesterday with Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of the Reagan and H.W. Bush administrations. Bruce made a point that really resonated with me, and he was gracious enough to allow me to republish it here.

I believe that political parties should do penance for their mistakes and just losing power is not enough. Part of that involves understanding why those mistakes were made and how to prevent them from happening again. Republicans, however, have done no penance. They just pretend that they did nothing wrong. But until they do penance they don't deserve any credibility and should be ignored until they do.

Barak Obama: Why We Need Health Care Reform

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

Homeowners tell how banks failed to modify mortgages

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

Nearly three years into the deepest U.S. housing slump in generations, lenders are modifying only a small number of problem mortgages, and rising foreclosures are restraining the economy's recovery.

Frank Rich: ‘Mad Men’ Crashes Woodstock’s Birthday

IN our 24/7 mediasphere, this weekend’s misty Woodstock commemorations must share the screen with Americans screaming bloody murder at town hall meetings. It’s a vivid reminder that what most endures from America, 1969, is not the peace-and-love flower-power bacchanal of Woodstock legend but a certain style of political rage. The angry white folk shouting down their congressmen might be — literally in some cases — those angry white students whose protests disrupted campuses before and after the Woodstock interlude of summer vacation ’69.

The most historically resonant television event this weekend, however, may be none of the above. Sunday night is the premiere of the third season of “Mad Men,” the AMC series about a fictional Madison Avenue ad agency in the early 1960s. The first episode is to be simulcast in Times Square after a costume party where fans can parade their retro wardrobes. This promotional event is Woodstock, corporate style, with martinis instead of marijuana, Sinatra instead of Shankar and narrow ties supplanting the tie-dyed.

Woodstock’s 40th anniversary is being celebrated as well — with new books, a new documentary, a new Ang Lee movie and the inevitable remastered DVDs and CDs. But it’s “Mad Men” that has the pulse of our moment. Though the show unfolds in an earlier America than Woodstock, it seems of far more recent vintage, for better and for worse.